CPS to start pre-school rating system

Chicago parents will be able to check out a standard rating system to tell how effective city-funded pre-schools are under a new program Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced today.

The 5-star scale for early childhood education programs will be up and running on-line in July 2012. There's no influx of new money to improve pre-schools, but Emanuel said money that's available will be channeled toward the facilities getting the highest scores so that all pre-schools have the incentive to improve.

"Throughout the system, you will have an educational standard," Emanuel said while appearing at the Educare Early Childhood Center in the Grand Crossing neighborhood. "Whether it's daycare system, Headstart or CPS-administered."

"That rating system, knowing how good they are, will be available to parents through technology and basically through a portal, so they can see the star rating system and know how the entity that they're enrolling their child is rated and graded on achieving educational goals set for those children," he said.

Emanuel said he hopes it helps Chicago earn federal education money coming to Illinois through the "Race to the Top" competition.

A "full-time advisory panel" will work with Chicago Public Schools to perform the evaluations that will determine how many stars each pre-school receives, Emanuel said. The panel will be an off-shoot of the Early Childhood Task Force he created, which called for the standard rating, but Emanuel did not specify who will serve on it or how they will perform their tasks.